This is an excerpt from a conversation we had with a customer today. As it turns out, Signs Manufacturing has been repeatedly threatened by this competing company about using keywords in advertising that have similar terms to their name. For instance, “signs” is a keyword that we use in advertising as you might imagine. This competitor claims that the term “Signs” is only reserved for them because their national brand has that word in it! Consequently, for the purposes of this article we will refer to this company as “Big-National-Franchise-That-Claims-To-Provide-All-Signs-In-A-Speedy-Manner” to avoid any future legal threats.

Signs Manufacturing Representative: Hello, this is [name] how can I help you?

Customer: I bought a channel letter sign from Big-National-Franchise-That-Claims-To-Provide-All-Signs-In-A-Speedy-Manner. They got it up but now my Landlord is saying that the sign has to be on a raceway!

Signs Manufacturing Representative: Why didn’t they build it on a raceway?

Customer: Well, I asked them that. They said they don’t do raceways! So now what do I do?

Signs Manufacturing Representative: Well, it’s not just that they don’t do raceways, they don’t build channel letters! They bought the sign from somebody else, bought the installation from a third party and marked it all up. The good news is that WE build our own signs, including raceways! We can build a raceway, remove the letters and mount them to the raceway, then re-install.

At this time there was a short conversation about what is involved changing the sign over to a raceway sign, followed by an appointment for the next workday (in this case, Monday). The conversation ended with:

Customer: So, do you think I can get my money back from Big-National-Franchise-That-Claims-To-Provide-All-Signs-In-A-Speedy-Manner? Not only do I need the raceway, which should have been done right in the first place, but the sign looks like crap!

Signs Manufacturing Representative: Unfortunately, I doubt it. But I’ll be happy to help you however I can.

Dallas Fire-Rescue investigators determined an electrical short in or near the neon Luna’s sign on the south side of the building started the blaze in the 8500 block of Harry Hines Boulevard.

The owner told fire investigators that after he smelled smoke inside the building he went outside to see a small fire near the sign.

Fire investigators say the several birds’ nests had been built in the hollow lettering of the sign, near electrical connections. Investigators say the nests were heavily burned and may have fueled the fire after the electrical short.

“It happened so quick, there wasn’t any time to get scared,” Fernando Luna Sr. said.

Luna’s is one of the oldest and most successful Latino-owned family businesses in Dallas.The Luna family has been making tortillas in Greater Dallas for nearly a century.

The business, which started in 1924 with Maria Luna making about 500 pieces of the flatbread every day, has a factory that makes 800 dozen tortillas per hour and distributes them to more than 250 local and national restaurants and cafes.

The Harry Hines location is Luna’s second home. Its original building was located on McKinney Avenue in the area once known at Little Mexico, which is now called Uptown,

Luna’s is nearing its 90th anniversary, and the Luna family vows to rebuild and continue a legacy built on love.

Since our website has been hosted by GoDaddy we have had many, many problems ranging from the blog not being able to load (this has been going on for a very long time), to the occasional outage to, most recently, a full blown failure of their company to keep the website up.

So, we’ve moved to GatorHost as our new home.

Time will tell, but so far it seems like GatorHost will be a much better fit. After all, if you’re reading this message on our blog, it’s already gotten better.